In recent years, suppression for the emission amount of carbon dioxide has become a matter of grave concern because of the impacts of the global warming due to an increase of carbon dioxide.
For instance, in the fuel production apparatus as disclosed in JP 2013-119556, steam and carbon dioxide after its amount of flowing is adjusted so as to be a prescribed molar ratio, steam and carbon dioxide are delivered to the cathode electrode among the anode and cathode electrodes to which electric power is supplied, so as to be electrolyzed. Then, the hydrogen and the carbon monoxide produced by this electrolysis are subjected to be pressurized and are cooled, and subsequently fuel is synthesized by utilizing a catalyst. In this fuel production apparatus, the efficiency of synthesizing the fuel is enhanced by heating steam and carbon dioxide to a high temperature, whereby carbon dioxide emissions is made suppressed.
However, in the above fuel production apparatus, since steam and carbon dioxide is heated to a high temperature of 600 degrees Celsius to 1100 degrees Celsius in order to facilitate electrolysis, a device configuration in order to obtain such a high-temperature environment becomes complicated, and such a problem occurred that the amount of energy used except for the electrolysis becomes surplus.
The present invention aims to resolve such a problem. That is, the present invention aims to provide a method of generating organic compounds and an organic-compound-generating system by which the organic compounds can be produced even under low-temperature environment.
We, the inventors of the present invention have adopted a method in which an aqueous solution containing carbon dioxide is subjected to be electrolyzed so as to produce organic compounds, and have discovered after repeated intensive studies focusing on a pH of the aqueous solution in the method that organic compounds can be efficiently produced when the pH of the aqueous solution is within a specified range under low-temperature environment.